Hermann Hesse Quotes

Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while

Joys too exquisite to last, And yet more exquisite when past.

O sweet, delusive Noon, Which the morning climbs to find, O moment sped too soon, And morning left behind.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods

A happy but miserable state in which man finds himself from time to time; sometimes he believes he is happy by loving, then suddenly he finds how miserable he is. It is all joy, it sweetens life, but it does not last. It comes and goes, but when it is active, there is no greater virtue, because it makes one supremely happy.

All too soon will Childhood gay Realise Life's sober sadness. Let's be merry while we may, Innocent and happy Fay! Elves were made for gladness!

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over

Living the same sorrows three times was a suffering, but it was a suffering to relive even the same joys. The joy of life is born from feeling, whether it be joy or grief, always of short duration, and woe to those who know they will enjoy eternal bliss.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty.

All human joys are swift of wing, For heaven doth so allot it; That when you get an easy thing, You find you haven't got it

I could hear the knock and whistle of the water pipes, the purr of the calico cat. And at that moment a happiness filled me that was pure and perfect and yet it was bled with despair - as if I had been handed a cup of ambrosial nectar to drink from and knew that once I finished drinking, the cup would be withdrawn forever, and nothing to come would ever taste as good.

But life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.

everything comes and goes; pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it?

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

Romantic comedies are there to give us dreams and butterflies, but what we can create in our own lives could be not only better but real.

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.

Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves. They flickered out saying: "It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds.

Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss.

To possess is past the instant; we achieve the joy, immortality contented, were anomaly.

We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.